According to a recent New York Times article the consumption of opioids (the main ingredient of both painkillers and heroin) resulted in 33,000 deaths in the USA in 2015. Nearly half of the deaths were due to an overdose of prescription painkillers. Excessive medical and non-medical use of opioids has been declared by US health officials to be a widespread epidemic in the country. In Europe, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reported that opioids may have played a role in up to 79% of deaths from overdoses in Europe in 2015.
A look at the relationship between the opium trade and the role of the United States and Western powers in recent history indicates that the menace of opioids could be a case of chickens coming home to roost.
The story of the opioid addiction in the West begins with the Opium Wars, unleashed by Britain on China in 1839, when the Chinese emperor of the Qing dynasty refused permission to bring opium into China.
Near unanimous support was provided by the United States and other Western powers not only for the Opium Wars but also for the traffic in opium during the heyday of British Empire. China’s efforts to stop the drug traffic by incarcerating some smugglers was denounced (with the politically motivated exception of some members of the Tory opposition) as a grievous sin, a wicked offence and an atrocious violation of justice, for which England had the right, by the law of God and man, to demand reparation by force if refused peacefully.
President Trump has declared the opioid epidemic in the US to be a national emergency
The opium trade was a direct result of the British addiction to a less lethal drug: the now ubiquitous tea. The Dutch introduced tea-drinking in Britain in 1664. In that year, all of two pounds and two ounces were imported into England. By 1783, however, the East India Company alone had sold six million pounds, and by 1785 the amount sold had reached 15 million pounds – not counting a similar amount smuggled into England by private traders to avoid taxes. The question that vexed the British was, “We love to drink tea, but how to pay for it?”
Before the popularity of tea grew in Europe, the British were mainly buying silk and ceramics from China. But the Chinese were not interested in English products: “...there is nothing we lack...nor do we need your country’s manufactures,” the Chinese emperor wrote to George III in 1793. The other option for the British was to pay with Indian cotton. But even though Britain sold an annual average of 27 million pounds of raw Indian cotton between 1785 and 1833, the sales revenues were not sufficient to buy all the tea they wished to ship to England.
The British, therefore, had to pay the Chinese in silver. This caused a major drainage of bullion from Europe. It is estimated that the amount of silver flowing into China between 1719 and 1833 represented as much as 20% of all European stocks. To add to the stock of silver the British East India Company had to procure it from the Spanish possessions in what was then called the New World. But the American Revolution in 1776 cut off the supply of Mexican silver to England. At the same time, cotton from northern China began to undercut the demand for Indian cotton. The answer to these financial problems came in the form of selling Indian opium for Chinese tea.
The opium trade was a direct result of the British addiction to a less lethal drug: the now ubiquitous tea
Opium was a perfect trading commodity and China was the perfect market. The substance was already used as medicine in China for centuries and there was a tendency to use it as a recreational drug. With the large inflow of opium from India, the number of addicts in China increased rapidly. The Chinese economy was facing a difficult time and opium became a means of psychological escape for the suffering population. In addition to creating serious health and social problems, the increased addiction to opium exacerbated the economic woes – as it resulted in a large reduction of Chinese silver stocks, which were used up to pay the British for the opium.
The contraband trade, that was probably the largest commerce of any commodity, brought huge profits to the British merchants involved. The real significance of the opium trade, however, lay in the key role it played in reducing Britain’s problem of the drainage of silver.
One of the many acquisitions by Britain after the conquest of Bengal was the monopoly of the sale of opium in 1773 and of its manufacture in 1797, a monopoly that had been a source of income for the Mughal Empire. By the nineteenth century, this monopoly accounted for one-seventh of the total revenue of British India. At the beginning of the century, the Court of Directors of the East India Company specifically suggested to the Governor-General of Bengal to increase the production of opium in order to avoid shipping bullion to China. By 1870 half of all Chinese imports were opium from Bengal and Bihar – produced under the state monopoly of the British East India Company. The sale of opium to China increased from 4,500 chests per year in 1821 to 10,000 chests in 1831 and jumped to 40,000 chests in 1838-39. This large export of opium to China resulted in huge revenues for the British and the balance of trade between Great Britain and China swung in favour of the British.
The production of opium had severe negative impacts on India too. Vast tracts of lands in Bengal and Behar that were previously used for producing cotton and food crops were replaced with poppy. The poppy was transferred to the opium processing factories in Ghazipur and Patna. Sometimes refined opium was used a form of payment to the factory workers, which resulted in a drastic rise in the number of Indians addicted to the drug. The farmers displaced from the land became indentured labors, who were transported by the British to the Caribbean islands. The farmers were not used to being on the high seas and the inhuman conditions on the transport ships (that were previously used to transport slaves) resulted in large loss of life and caused untold suffering due to hunger and disease. The Indian businessmen though, mainly the Parsis, who were associated with the shipping business, reaped huge financial gains as they leased their ships to the British for opium transport. This was the time when Mumbai became the finance and trade centre of India; a position that it maintains even now.
In 1839 the Chinese government ordered the confiscation of quantities of opium which were being smuggled into China from India and the Whig government led by Lord Melbourne declared war against China in defense of the smugglers. With their technologically superior naval forces, better armaments and well-trained soldiers, the British managed to crush any resistance from the Chinese forces of the Qing dynasty. Most of the British soldiers that were sent to fight in China were Indians from the opium growing areas. Compared to the lighter loss of life in the British army, the Chinese death count was much higher.
While the Chinese were fighting only to stop the opium traffic, the British war aim was wider; the satisfaction of the English Free Traders’ demand for unrestricted liberty of trade in China. This is what the Treaty of Nanking (1842) after the first opium war achieved, besides, of course, acquisition of the crucial trading center, Hong Kong. The treaty of Tientsin (1858), after the second Opium war, completed the process by opening eleven more ports to Free Trade. By the end of the century British traders succeeded in gaining access to markets in inland China as well.
The eye-opening history of the Opium Wars has been fictionalised brilliantly by the author Amitav Ghosh in his Ibis trilogy that consists of the novels Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire.
The defeat in the Opium Wars left a deep impact on the Chinese psyche and there is a great shame associated with it. This sad chapter of their history is still taught in the history books as a lesson in the consequences of moral and military weakness and a lack of preparedness.
In many ways, modern Chinese policy-makers are using the lessons learnt from the Opium Wars. There are numerous and severe regulations on the use of narcotics in China, and while there is still some opioid abuse, it is nowhere near the scale in the West. Add to this the fact that China’s balance of trade with the West has reverted in the favour of China after the debacle in the 19th century – and it shows that unlike the Western powers, the Chinese have learnt their lesson well.
